


Frequency

by DollyPop



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: Eavesdropping, F/M, Mutual SteinMarie, One Sided Medusa/Stein, One-Sided Attraction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-22
Updated: 2016-03-22
Packaged: 2018-05-28 10:16:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6325084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DollyPop/pseuds/DollyPop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Medusa sits in her tomb of pillars, alone, her hands shaking as she listens to the radio and watches the light of her crystal ball cast shadows on her walls. She listens to him say "Marie" like a prayer, like a talisman. </p>
<p>Like "I love you". </p>
<p>And she slams her palm against the radio so hard, it shatters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Frequency

She had told herself and Eruka and Free, regardless of how little they truly comprehended, that she was looking for intel. Marie Mjolnir was a Death Scythe with the highest clearance available. Any information that went through Death would go through her, as well. It was through Mjolnir that Medusa knew about BREW. It was through Mjolnir that Medusa could twist the DWMA, play them on strings like puppets.

Stein? Stein was just a perk. An attractive perk. Listening to him slowly going madder and madder, laughing maniacally, had been too good a treat to pass up. He was falling apart at his well-stitched seams and she was listening in to it, visiting in hallucinations, always in his head. He was mad. Mad about her. Mad because of her. And, really, it was a dream of an idea, that the greatest Meister to ever walk the halls of the DWMA couldn’t even locate one measly snake. 

She was brilliant. She was victorious. BREW was won with a simple snake in a simple woman, and Medusa had, single-handedly, beaten Arachne and Death at their own games. Why couldn’t she have it all? The world would be reborn, Crona was falling directly into her hands, once more, sad, sniveling child they were, and if she was the cause of the chaos, she who brought Cronos into the world to herald in a new order, she was allowed to have a tall, silver-haired toy by her side.

It had all been so smooth, in her head. And it went smoothly for so long. Weeks upon weeks, she’d listened in to meetings as they grew more frantic, Death’s voice fluctuating and going higher, like a balloon with the air leaving too fast. That stupid Scythe going solomon. And Stein put under house arrest as he fell to tatters.

She didn’t count on it going sour.

She’d known that there would be mindless background noise, stupid, empty conversations of stale small talk the hammer and Stein would have to go through. Mjolnir was too chatty not to. 

And, frankly, Medusa had found it funny. She’d been privy to the tonfa’s phone calls, to her useless girl talk, to her painfully obvious attempts at showing affection. Medusa had known it would be useless: Stein did not love. It was not in him. That was why she liked him, why she wanted him.

That was why, when she tuned into the radio once more, ready to see if there was anything worth listening to, she was unwitting to what was truly going on. It was as it always was. Except, this time, there was no “I’m home”. Stein had nowhere to go. The DWMA had trapped him in his own Lab and that was deliciously unfortunate, as well. It was as though Death had accepted that there was no slowing the progress: that Stein was completely unhinging and the only thing to keep him in place was the noose of rules the DWMA had ingrained in him, a one-eyed warden, and walls he had built himself. Foolish. 

The radio hissed and crackled, but the voice was clear as it always was.

_“Stein?”_ Medusa heard, the distinctly feminine voice of the Death Scythe warbling out in a quiet mezzo. And, in the background, there was the silent white-noise of static.

Medusa hummed, leaning back. It would seem that there was something to listen to, after all.

_“Stein? Are you okay?”_

A hum. The soft sound of cloth rustling. But no rolling chair, no laughter. Medusa’s smirk stretched over her face. Maybe he had finally escaped, her little convict with his soul too big for Death’s academy. Become the man she’d wanted him to be.

There were no footsteps, however, and Medusa’s eyebrows twitched closer together.

If she listened in close enough, she’d be able to make out the barely audible sound of a hand running through hair, but it was near drowned out in the static. Medusa smacked her palm against the side of it, trying to get it to sound better. What did a witch have to do for some decent sound quality, anyway? Implanting a snake inside someone wasn’t enough?

And then, she heard it. The shuddering breath, as though someone were about to cry.

_“Stein? Stein, I’m here. I’ll always be here.”_

Medusa wanted to laugh. At Marie. At her attempts. At how feeble she truly was in the situation. That was why love was useless, after all. Nothing could help Stein. Were he to resonate with the hammer-woman, it would do more harm than good. The main means of comfort between Meister and Weapon were cut by her own hands and yet Mjolnir was ever in the dark. She’d give and give and get nothing in return.

It was almost ironic. He was the hammer’s tragedy, her Byronic hero. And it made him feel even more despicable as a result. Because he knew he wasn’t worth it, worth her: all he was worth was the dark, a cold spot next to Medusa that he could warm in body alone. The rest was unnecessary.

_“Marie…”_

His voice was a rumble, low, gravelly, harsh from so many years of smoking. And muffled. As though he were holding his face in his hands, or covering his mouth.

_“I’m here,”_ Marie repeated.

A rustle, another long pause of silence.

_“I know,”_ he said.  _“I know.”_

Medusa’s brows came together again. It wasn’t the usual dialogue. It wasn’t even the usual dialogue after he had gone through a period of laughter that would send shivers down most people’s spines.

Usually, she could tell what was happening through the dialogue alone. The silence, however, was less telling. There was too much that could have been happening. 

Slowly, Medusa looked over at the crystal orb she kept atop a rich purple cloth. Ears were usually enough, which was why she hadn’t put as much thought into the eyes portion of it.

She was a scientist to her core, however. Curious. And she slowly made her way over to the glass ball, peering down into it even as the hazy static of the audio seemed to flicker to an almost eerie clarity.

_“Marie,”_ Stein breathed out, and the rustling came, again.

So she sits at her crystal ball, bringing her hands to it and sucking in a deep breath. Rachel’s girl-body wasn’t conducive to most of her spells, so she had to be careful. And when the image in the glass prison first came up, Medusa was certain that something had gone wrong. It was just shadows. The flickering of darkness.

It took a moment for the image to come into focus, for the hazy light of Mjolnir’s body to illuminate the entire image.

_“Marie,”_ Stein said, again, and Medusa watched his hold around the other woman’s waist tighten, his face buried against her stomach. He was sitting as she stood, and her golden, glowing hands were carding through his hair.

And Medusa felt her belly bottom out.

_“I love you,”_ she heard Mjolnir say, and she watched as Stein pressed his cheek to her, his eyes closed. 

What she had thought was the shuddering breath of someone about to cry was far different. A shudder of a different kind. One born from pleasure and not from pain.

She felt sick. The world wobbled around her.

_“I know,”_ he replied, his labcoat rustling as Marie settled closer to him, standing between his legs.  _“Thank you.”_

But, though he said “I know”,  the way he said it sounded like something else. Like what Mjolnir had said to him. It was the same tone, the same sentiment behind it. 

Marie’s hands were stroking his shoulders, and he was letting her touch him, relaxed in her hold, his palm splayed open on her lower back. Medusa could imagine his warm breath warming Mjolnir’s skin through her clothes. His hands shaping over her body. Mjolnir cupped his cheek and he didn’t move away.

If anything, he was leaning in to her touch.

_“I know.”_

There was no denial with him when he said it. There was no “no”. Not like when Medusa had said “I love you” to him all those months ago. When he told her he couldn’t love. When he told her she was just like him. When he told her he didn’t understand it.

It sounded like he understood it, now, she thought bitterly. It sounded like he understood it too well.

So, Medusa sits in her tomb of pillars, alone, her hands shaking against the crystal orb that turned red, angry and throbbing with her emotions. Medusa listens to the radio and watches the light of her crystal ball cast shadows on her walls. Medusa did not expect it to go sour for her.

She listens to him say  _“Marie”_ once more and she slams her palm against the radio so hard, it goes flying across the room, smashing against a wall into bits. 

Yet, even in the chaos that is the smash, she cannot forget that the way he says it sounds like prayer, it sounds like a talisman.

It sounds like _“I love you”_.

**Author's Note:**

> For a "The Way You Said 'I love You'" meme, prompt Number 10: Not said to me!


End file.
